Unstructured Finance

By Matthew Goldstein and Svea Herbst-Bayliss

The WSJ is out today with a big story saying Stevie Cohen and SAC Capital are bracing for up to $1 billion in redemptions, or roughly 16 percent of the $6.3 billion it manages for outside investors. That’s a lot of money but sources are telling us redemptions will likely come in lower than that—think more in the $500 million range.

And more important, no matter what the figure is, don’t look for it to put much crimp in Cohen’s operation.

The deadline for submitting redemptions is Feb. 15, so there is still plenty of time for outside investors make a decision about sticking around or leaving. And even if an investor puts in a redemption notice now, those requests to withdraw money can get pulled at the last minute if the investor has a change of heart.

So far, the most notable redemption request comes from Titan Advisors, the investment fund run by George Fox, a friend of Cohen. Titan, as we noted has been pulling money from big funds for a while, so the decision may be motivated as much by the latest headlines in the insider trading investigation as much as a strategic shift by the investment firm.

Titan, which had been with Cohen for many years, is believed to have had between $75 million and $150 million with SAC Capital, sources say.  Titan hasn’t yet sent investors  a year end letter formally explaining its rationale for bailing on SAC Capital.

By Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein

It appears that Bill Gross’s PIMCO Total Return Fund is losing ground with investors — just not as fast as we originally thought.

Morningstar, the mutual-fund tracker, initially told us that PIMCO’s flagship fund had suffered $17 billion in net outflows over the last 12 months. It turns out Morningstar discovered this morning that it miscalculated and the figure actually is $10.3 billion.

That’s slightly better news for Gross but the trend still holds that the fund is seeing  a steady stream of outflows. Morningstar estimates that in October and November of this year, PIMCO Total Return fund has seen $1.69 billion in customer redemptions.

By Matthew Goldstein

By most objective measures, hedge fund magnate John Paulson isn’t having a particularly good year.

His Paulson Advantage Plus fund lost nearly 6 percent in May. His Paulson & Co. fund empire is believed to have absorbed a $300 million paper loss when shares of Sino-Forest got hammered in the wake of a critical report from a noted short-seller, who claims the company has overstated the value of its lumber holdings. And the bullish bet he’s made on a rebound in the housing market appears to be several years too early.

Then again, this is John Paulson–the mastermind of the mega subprime housing bet, which bolted him to fame and riches and certified his rock star status in the $2 trillion hedge fund industry. Today, his New York firm controls about $37 billion in assets and seems to keep taking in new investor money every day.